ELDRED, THOMAS (fl. 1586–1622), mariner of Ipswich, was with Thomas Cavendish [q. v.] in one or both of his voyages, but not, so far as we know, in any position of authority. In or about 1600 he was appointed to a command in the service of the East India Company (Cal. S. P. East Indies, 7 Nov. 1600), and appears to have continued in that service for some years as commander or factor (ib. 4 March 1607; 1 April 1609). Gage identifies him with the Thomas Eldred buried at Great Saxham on 5 Nov. 1622; but three years later a Thomas Eldred was at Ipswich, in command of a ship lately come from Denmark (Cal. S. P. Dom. 4 Oct. 1625). Thomas Eldred the mariner was certainly of Ipswich; and there is nothing beyond Gage's conjecture which connects him so closely with Great Saxham.
He is said to have been of the same family as John Eldred [q. v.], but in what degree of relationship does not appear. He was not a brother, but may very probably have been a more or less distant cousin. He married Margaret Stud of Ipswich, and had a son John, alderman of Colchester, who purchased the estate of Olivers in Essex, where a portrait, possibly of Thomas Eldred, is preserved.
[Archæologia, xv. 403; Gage's Hist. and Antiq. of Suffolk, Thingoe Hundred, 107 n.; Morant's Essex, ii. 193, where the persons and dates are in wild confusion, John of Great Saxham, the son of John, and John of Olivers, the son of Thomas, being mixed up into one. In the indexes of the Calendars of State Papers there seems to be also great confusion between the two.]
ELDRED, WILLIAM (fl. 1646), master gunner of Dover Castle, born about 1563, signed as a freeholder of Dover the Kentish petition for the reformation of the liturgy in 1641 [Proc. in Kent, Camd. Soc. p. 62), was author of 'The Gunner's Glasse, wherein the diligent Practicioner may see his defects, and may from point to point reform and amend all errors that are commonly incident to unskilful gunners,' sm. 4to, 1646. The book, an interesting account of the great gun exercise as then in vogue, has a quaint portrait labelled 'Ætatis suæ 83' with the verse, —
When Age and Art and Industry beside
Doth all invite, Experience being guide,
Then who will say but surely this may be
A piece of work exact from dotage free.
The dedication to the Earl of Warwick says that he had spent the greatest part of his time in Dover Castle; that he had been a gunner for about sixty years, and that for thirty years and more he had been making notes of matters relating to gunnery, which he has embodied in his little treatise. In the body of the work he mentions incidentally that he had served also as a gunner in the Low Countries and in Germany. It would appear probable that he was a relation of John Eldred and of Thomas Eldred [q. v.], but no identification is possible.
[Eldred's Gunner's Glasse; Cal. S. P. Dom. 1620-4.]
ELEANOR, ALIENOR, or ÆNOR, Duchess of Aquitaine, Queen of France and Queen Of England (1122?-1204), is said to have been born in 1122. Her father was William X, duke of Aquitaine; her mother, Ænor de Châtelleraut, died before her husband. Eleanor's grandfather, William IX, the famous troubadour and crusader, had married Philippa, daughter of William, count of Toulouse, and their son, William X, was thus able to bequeath a somewhat shadowy claim over this lordship to his daughter's second husband, Henry II of England (Geoffrey of Vigeois, pp. 304, 299; Chron. Malleacense, p. 403). Through the above-mentioned Philippa, whose mother was the daughter of William the Conqueror's brother, Robert, earl of Montaign, Eleanor was distantly related to her future husband Henry II (Rob. de Monte, p. 509).
William X, duke of Aquitaine, died at Compostella on Good Friday 1137. Before starting on his pilgrimage he had made arrangements for the marriage of his eldest daughter Eleanor to Louis, afterwards Louis VII, eldest son of Louis VI, king of France. By his will, which is preserved in an old chronicle, he bequeathed Aquitaine and Poitou to his prospective son-in-law. The younger Louis assumed the inheritance at Limoges (29 June 1137), and a few days later, probably on Sunday, 4 July, the marriage was celebrated at Bordeaux in presence of the nobles of Gascony, Poitou, and Saintonge (Chron, ap. Bouquet, xii. 115-16 ; Chron. of Tours, p. 1153; Geoffrey of Vigeois, pp. 304-5; Suger, p. 62). By this alliance the whole of south-west Gaul, from the borders of Brittany and Anjou to the Pyrenees, was added to the domains of the new French king (Will, of Newb. p. 102), who suc-
